On Friday, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) said the Brent Spence Bridge project between Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky had cleared the comprehensive environmental review.
The announcement sets the stage for work on the bridge to break ground in the coming months, officials said. The DOT has invested $1.6 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for the bridge following an accident in 2020 that damaged it. The bridge is a major corridor between Kentucky and Ohio, as well as a major freight corridor along I-71 and I-75.
“Thanks to President Biden’s leadership, infrastructure improvements that have long been a dream are finally happening across America — and that includes massive projects like the new Brent Spence Bridge,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said. “This bridge carries over $1 billion in freight and over 160,000 drivers every day, and today we are proud to mark the completion of the environmental review for the new Brent Spence Bridge, enabling the project to move to construction in the coming months. After years of talk about major infrastructure funding for America, President Biden got it done.”
Officials said the project will upgrade the existing bridge and build a new additional bridge to ease traffic congestion along the route that carries freight from Canada to Florida. In November 2020, an Old Dominion truck carrying potassium hydroxide crashed into a jackknifed commercial motor vehicle on the bridge. The Old Dominion driver jumped out of the vehicle before grabbing hazmat paperwork as the truck caught fire. Emergency management personnel said more than 400 gallons of diesel fuel caught on fire and burned for two hours, reaching temperatures of up to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
The currently price tag for the bridge project is $3.6 billion, which will be split between Ohio and Kentucky, with each paying for the approach work occurring in their respective state.